A passion of mine would have to be reading, I love reading everything from Harry Potter to Dostoevsky, experiencing the occasional nostalgic feeling as I flip through the pages of Go Dog Go, and of course His Word. This might possibly be why I enjoy my major so much, being “forced” to read about three books a week only to look forward to analyzing the beauty behind every word. Thinking thoughts I never thought I would ever think.
Thankfully, over these couple of days of Thanksgiving break I able to read a book and not have to write a paper by a certain day, a book I picked myself; Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller. I absolutely love this man’s writing; I love Blue Like Jazz and A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. So I figured I would read another one of his books, easy to read and yet so powerful. Needless to say, it only took the “Author’s note” at the front of the book to capture my mind in the same way God has captured my heart. So, below is an excerpt from this book, the excerpt that got me thinking about that word.
“I bought the lie that academic life had to be separate from relational experience, as though God only wanted us to learn cognitive ideas, as if the heart of man were only created to resonate with movies. No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath.
It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, casting with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were. . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea that you never again will be.
So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only the thin wisp of the story in your right. You will know by the page count, not by the narrative, that the Author is wrapping things up. You begin to mourn its ending, and want to pace yourself slowly toward its closure, knowing the last lines will speak of something beautiful, of the end of something long and earned, and you hope the thing closes out like last breaths, like whispers about how much and who the characters have come to love, and how authentic the sentiments feel when they have earned a hundred pages of qualifications
And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as way of understanding God. We got one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?
It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
I want to repeat one word for you: Leave
Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed.”
Leave. . . why am I leaving? It’s not because I am depressed, or because I am having a crisis in my life, and not because I am trying to escape something or someone. If anything I am very happy with where I am, I love my school, my classes, my friends, my family. . . I am very comfortable.
Comfort…hmmm, I am not sure if Christ every said, “The storms will stop and you will be comfortable if you follow me.” Sure my faith is strong in Him, but how easy it is to have faith when you have all you desire, when your weekly sacrifice for God is going to church instead of watching football, when you are comfortable; how easy. Even the Devil recognizes this in the book of Job. Maybe that’s why the least are the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Love, I go for love, for the cross, to bring Him glory. I am not the older brother for my motive is not the reward, I am so madly in love and people do the craziest things for the ones they love. My desires and dreams are NOT a 40 hour work week, are NOT based on money, and are especially NOT built around my comfort. My dreams and desires are His desires, the desires He has placed on my heart, and His desire is that all glory be brought to Him through love and worship from all people of all nations.
LOVE
